Indefatigable class battlecruiser, HMAS Australia (C6/C09/C81) - The one and only capital ship of the Australian navy

de Radio Demon@live · May 13, 2021

Indefatigable class battlecruiser, HMAS Australia (C6/C09/C81) - The one and only capital ship of the Australian navy

Background

HMAS Australia was the third ship of the Indefatigable class battlecruisers built from 1909 to the early 1910's as the third and final ship of the class and Australia herself is a very unique ship just from her very existence alone as in fact she was the only capital ship to ever serve in the Royal Australian Navy, though this is not to say her service was pretty dull, yet at the same time not that intense. The Indefatigable class of battlecruisers were the successor class of the first battlecruiser class, that being of the Invincible class of battlecruiser which they were heavily influenced by in their design, so much so that when comparing the 2 classes that the Indefatigable in their designs were basically a modified design of that of the Invincible class in which the ships had longer hulls in order to provide the wing turrets a better cross deck firing arcs as well as being capable of traveling greater ranges however they were by far still on par in protection with that of the previous class and were still smaller and less armored than that of German battlecruisers such as SMS Von der Tann.

Australia was armed with 8 BL 12 inch Mk X guns (305mm) in 4 twin turrets with one turret at the front of the ship and a second at the rear of the ship while the other turrets were in wing turret positions with the ability for cross deck firing, additionally she was also built with 16 BL 4 inch Mk VII guns (102mm) which were all located in the superstructure of the ship, and finally the ships also came with 3 18 inch torpedo tubes with 12 torpedo carried in total to complete her armament however during her service this would change as she would see her rear torpedo tube removed, the removal of 4 inch guns plus the installation of Anti aircraft defense varying from 3 inch guns to 4 inch guns depending of the refit in question as well as seeing her armor slightly improved and the installation of fire control directors and flying off decks for planes.

History

HMAS Australia was ordered on December 9th, 1909 as a result of the 1909 imperial conference, she was laid down on June 6th, 1910 at John Brown & Company's Clydebank yard and was launched on October 25th, 1911, and she commissioned on June 21st, 1913, and before leaving for Australia would take part in a number of farewell ceremonies which saw her visited by King George V and Edward, Prince of Wales which was also saw the Australian rear admiral George Patey of the RAN become knighted which had been the first time a naval officer had been knighted aboard a vessel since Francis Drake and this also saw her visited by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for the Colonies Lewis Harcourt, and the High Commissioners of other British Dominions and following her farewell ceremony left for her namesake country though she first made a stop of South Africa to promote friendly relations before making it to Australia on October 4th.

Following her arrival she would general spend her time visiting Australian ports as well as taking part in a exercises up until July 30th, 1914 when she received word to make preparations for the outbreak of war in Europe which saw her return to Sydney where she took on more coal and on August 3rd she was placed back under British admiralty control and as such she was ordered to seek out an destroy enemy vessels along with the China station squadron with their main target being von Spee's German East Asia squadron which was one of the reason he ended headed towards South American as her presence prevented his plants to harass British shipping and colonies. With the war starting Australia would find herself first being apart of a attempted operation to sink the East Asia squadron while they believed they were based at Rabaul which was considered to be the likely place they would be and Australia's orders for the operation was to hold back if the armored cruiser SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau were present in which case the plane was to lead the 2 cruiser within Australia's gun range however the German force was not their and as such when they arrived they found no German warships and following which they decided to search other nearby bays and coastline providing no results they returned to Port Moresby to refuel.

Following the unsuccessful search for the East Asia squadron and with them nowhere to be found Australia along with the ships began to escort as well as support the occupation of the German islands before finding herself caught up in the search for the East Asia Squadron which saw Australia patrol around Fiji, Samoa, and New Caledonia before after being confirmed that the German force was heading east though Emden was sent west and after The British defeat in the first action against the squadron Australia was sent East after taking on more coal to begin pursuit however she along with Japanese ships were sent north towards the Galapagos Islands to prevent any attempts of passing through the Panama Canal and as such she would never encounter the East Asia Squadron as it was then defeated in early December and following which she would end up being sent back to Europe though before she could do so she encountered the former German passenger liner, now naval auxiliary Eleonora Woermann who was clear of the shipping routes and of which Australia fired a warning shot before sunset as up until that point she was unable to catch the vessel due to one of her propellers being damaged and she would end up capturing the ship and even though she was unable to catch the Eleonora Woermann earlier she was still to slow to keep up with the battlecruiser, this was not helped by the fact Australia did not have enough crew to spare to man the ship and as such she took the German crew aboard and sunk the vessel, after this and a stop at Gibraltar she arrived in Britain on February 17th where she became the flagship of the 2nd battlecruiser squadron and her time with the 2nd BCS saw her mostly take part in training and patrols in the north sea and the duties themselves were so monotonous that one sailor was driven insane from it.

In 1916 Australia would end up ramming her sister New Zealand twice within 3 minutes after finding herself in heavy fog and received enough damage that she required repairs and as such Australia would miss out on the Battle of Jutland though her repairs ended up being completed faster than expected and she would continue her duties along with attempts to intercept raiding German forces to no avail and in 1917 she would ram HMS Repulse which resulted in more repairs and sadly for the mighty Australian battlecruiser in 1918 she ended up taking part in escorting convoys to Norway and she would end up never seeing any major action during the entire war.

With the war over the moral of the crew since Australia entering service had been fairly low as the proportion of Australia's sailors who were placed on disciplinary charges during World War I was among the highest in the RAN which was further applied by the following: frustration at not participating in the Battle of Jutland, high rates of illness, limited opportunities for leave, delays or complete lack of deferred pay, and poor-quality food, the continuation of strict wartime routines and discipline after the armistice frustrated the ship's crew, and additionally there was also the perception that Australia's British personnel were being promoted faster than their Australian counterparts and were dominating leadership positions though this would be lessened slightly as her visit to Fremantle in late May was greeted quite hospitably however she had to leave 3 days later. Attempting to make things less stressful representatives of the ship's company approached Captain Claude Cumberlege to ask for a one-day delay on departure which would have allowed the sailors to have a full weekend of leave, give Perth-born personnel the chance to visit their families, and give personnel another chance to invite people aboard however sadly for the crew Australia had a tight schedule of "welcome home" port visits, and such delays could not even be considered. The next day would then see 80 to 100 sailors gathered in front of 'P' turret, some in working uniform, others who had just returned from shore leave still in libertyman rig around 10:00 am prompting the captain to send executive officers to find out what they were doing however he had to end up going down after finding out it was due to the talks the previous day and when he reached the group he informed the sailors that delaying Australia's departure was impossible, and ordered them to disperse, of which they listened with some voicing their displeasure, following this however things would get worse as after Australia was ready to depart he was informed that the stokers had abandoned the boiler rooms and after the sailors were dispersed some sailors had masked themselves with black handkerchiefs, and encouraged or intimidated the stokers on duty into leaving their posts, leaving the navy's flagship stranded at the buoy, in full view of dignitaries and crowds lining the nearby wharf and in order to deal with the worsening mutiny they had to send sailors drafted from other departments to go down to the boiler room and in total this delayed her departure by 1 hour. After the whole ordeal a number of sailors were charged with committing mutiny and were and were to be imprisoned however the public learning of this called for Admiralty to pardon the sailors which at first saw their sentences reduced by half before reducing even more for them to be released by December 20th that year however the government had angered the Naval Board in appealing to the Admiralty without consulting the Board first and the First Naval Member, Rear Admiral Percy Grant and Commander of the Fleet, Commodore John Dumaresq, submitted their resignations in protest, as they felt the show of clemency would lead to a breakdown in discipline, and that if the government continued to communicate with the Admiralty without consulting the Board, it would undermine the Board's authority though later both were convinced to withdraw their resignation.

Following the end of the mutiny and the war Australia would spend her final years she would be taken out of active service due to the fact that with the East Asia Squadron now gone she really had no more purpose though she was not place in reserve but rather used as a training ship however in 1921 she was placed in reserve and in 1922 with the Washington Naval Treaty being signed it required that Australia (the country) had to dispose of her as apart of the Washington naval treaty she had to since Britain and Australia had close relations and that one part of the treaty prevented the British from giving any of their capital ships to any friendly countries that in time of war they could buy back or bring back into RN service and as such she began in 1923 the process of removing equipment from her which lasted until 1924 and following which she was towed out to deep enough water to scuttle her as the treaty also required that she could not be feasibly raised and as such only personnel who served on her were chosen to be the ones to scuttle her and on April 12th she was towed out east of Sydney and scuttled bringing a end to the first and only Australian capital ship. He location of where she was scuttled was recorded and as such her wreck was lost until 1990 when her wreck was encountered by the Fugro Seafloor Surveys vessel MV Moana Wave 1 while surveying the path of the PacRimWest communications cable and though they didn't identify her one survey vessel theorized it was in fact her and the coordinates were kept secret until 2002 and this piqued the interest of a member of the New South Wales Heritage Office, who requested copies of the company's data as they wished to confirm if it was her or not and so in 2007 they went to the RAN looking for support in using a ROV which would be need to identify her and though the RAN was in on supporting them they were not able to do so as they did not have any equipment that fit the need to reach the wreck however that same year the United States had loaned a ROV to the Australian Government, to locate and recover a Black Hawk helicopter which crashed during the Australian response to the 2006 Fijian coup d'état and while the vessel carrying the ROV was on it's way back home made a stop at the wreck and it would be their that it was officially identified that the wreak was indeed that of HMAS Australia and as such her wreak is protected under the federal Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976.

Specification

Displacement:

18,500 long tons (18,800 t) at load

22,130 long tons (22,490 t) at deep load

Length: 590 ft (179.8 m)

Beam: 80 ft (24.4 m)

Draft: 30 ft 4 in (9.2 m) at maximum

Installed power:

44,000 shp (32,811 kW)

31 Babcock & Wilcox boilers

Propulsion: 4 shafts; 2 steam turbine sets

Speed: 25 knots (46 km/h; 29 mph)

Range: 6,690 nautical miles (12,390 km; 7,700 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)

Complement: 818 (1913)

Armament:

Note: After further review I have decided not to include the 47mm gun in the list here since after look over a source which states by the point of Australia's service most were used as training or saluting guns and in Australia's case I believe they fall into one of the 2 categories since her refits she had during peacetime had them equipped however her refits that she had during the 1st world war never came with the 47mm guns however incase I have mistaken I will list which refits do not come with the 47mm gun just incase. Refits with 4 x 3pdr/40 (47mm) Hotchkiss Mk I guns : As Built, 1919, 1920)

As built

Primary armament:

8 × BL 12-inch/45 (305mm) Mk X guns (880 rounds carried total (Wartime conditions), 110 rounds per gun)

Secondary armament:

16 × BL 4-inch/50 (102mm) Mk VII guns (1,600 rounds total, 100 per gun)

Torpedo tubes:

3 × 18-inch torpedo tubes (12 carried total)

1915 Refit (also gains fire control direct somewhere between this refit and 1916 refit)

Primary armament:

8 × BL 12-inch/45 (305mm) Mk X guns (880 rounds carried total (Wartime conditions), 110 rounds per gun)

Secondary armament:

14 × BL 4-inch/50 (102mm) Mk VII guns (1,400 rounds total, 100 per gun) (all these guns have blast shields now as they had received it by either the 1914 or 1915 refit)

Anti aircraft armament:

1 x QF 3 inch/45 (76mm) 20cwt Mk I gun (500 rounds total)

Torpedo tubes:

2 × 18-inch torpedo tubes (12 carried total)

1917 Refit

Primary armament:

8 × BL 12-inch/45 (305mm) Mk X guns (880 rounds carried total (Wartime conditions), 110 rounds per gun)

Secondary armament:

14 × BL 4-inch/50 (102mm) Mk VII guns (1,400 rounds total, 100 per gun)

Anti aircraft armament:

1 x BL 4-inch (102mm) Mk VII gun (100 rounds total)

1 x QF 3 inch/45 (76mm) 20cwt Mk I gun (500 rounds total)

Torpedo tubes:

2 × 18-inch torpedo tubes (12 carried total)

1919 Refit (Also got flying off platforms the previous year however that refit is not included due to it being the only change)

Primary armament:

8 × BL 12-inch/45 (305mm) Mk X guns (880 rounds carried total (Wartime conditions), 110 rounds per gun)

Secondary armament:

14 × BL 4-inch/50 (102mm) Mk VII guns (1,400 rounds total, 100 per gun)

Anti aircraft armament:

1 x BL 4-inch/50 (102mm) Mk VII gun (100 rounds total)

1 x QF 3-inch/45 (76mm) 20cwt Mk I gun (500 rounds total)

Torpedo tubes:

2 × 18-inch torpedo tubes (12 carried total)

1920 Refit

Primary armament:

8 × BL 12-inch/45 (305mm) Mk X guns (880 rounds carried total (Wartime conditions), 110 rounds per gun)

Secondary armament:

14 × BL 4-inch/50 (102mm) Mk VII guns (1,400 rounds total, 100 per gun)

Anti aircraft armament:

2 x QF 4-inch/45 (102mm) Mk V guns (Estimated 200 rounds carried total with 100 rounds per gun if the ammo count was the same as before for the older 4 inch gun)

Torpedo tubes:

2 × 18-inch torpedo tubes (12 carried total)

Armor:

Belt: 4–6 in (102–152 mm)

Decks: 1.5–2.5 in (38–64 mm)

Barbettes: 7 in (178 mm)

Turrets: 7 in (178 mm)

Sources:

Spoiler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_Australia_(1911)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefatigable-class_battlecruiser

https://www.navy.gov.au/hmas-australia-i

https://www.navypedia.org/ships/australia/aus_bb_australia.htm

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_12-45_mk10.php

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_4-50_mk7.php

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_3-45_mk1.php

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_4-45_mk5.php

Image Sources:

Spoiler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_Australia_(1911)

https://www.navy.gov.au/hmas-australia-i

https://www.tumgir.com/tag/hmas australia

Edited July 19, 2022 by de Radio Demon@live

Princess_Pinch · May 13, 2021

Open for discussion. o7

TheNexonRegime · May 13, 2021

Australia needs more representation. +1

굴러온 · May 13, 2021

+1 for premium ship. British cruisers are suck and need of another high rank ship for tree grinding. And this ship's specialty of 'final capital ship of Australia' gives a good reason to be premium ship for British tech tree

Edited May 13, 2021 by im_blind_idiot

Milocat · May 13, 2021

+1 from me, this would be great in the British tree as an event vehicle or something.

CokeSpray · February 28, 2023

Suggestion passed to the developers for consideration.

Indefatigable class battlecruiser, HMAS Australia (C6/C09/C81) - The one and only capital ship of the Australian navy

HMAS Australia (Battlecruiser)
31 members have voted

1. Would you like to see the battlecruiser HMAS Australia added to the game?

2. What configuration/refit should she be added in?

de Radio Demon@live 266